Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up, and with it comes everyone’s favorite Chinese holiday snack: moon cakes. Moon cakes are starchy pastries filled with egg yolk, meat, fruit or something sweet. They’re also extremely heavy, and very filling. A single moon cake often contains 1000 calories (some even more), or roughly the equivalent of two Big Macs.

During Mid-Autumn Festival, friends and families give moon cakes to each other and most employers give out moon cake vouchers to their employees. The funny thing is, like Christmas fruit cakes in the west, not many people seem to actually like them.

In recent years, modern moon cakes have made a big impact with an assortment of new fillings. Coffee chains like Starbucks and Costa Coffee have all jumped on board, selling fancy gift boxes of moon cakes at pretty hefty prices of 200 RMB ($30) and up for a small box of 4 – 8 cakes.

Last year, my company gave us Häagen-Dazs ice-cream moon cakes, complete with dry-ice compartment in the package to prevent them from melting. This year, I received more traditional pastry moon cakes with some great fillings such as mango cream, coconut, red bean, and green tea.